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Talk:Richard Trevithick (A Different Flesh)
It's probably time to reclassify this guy as a fictional, but with a substantial lit comm to explain that he's an analog of a historical Englishman. And the inconsistency with the picture caption can stay, as supplement to the lit comm. Renaming the article "Richard Trevithick (A Different Flesh)" is probably unnecessary, as HT is unlikely to put the OTL English Trevithick in a story. Nor have many people have heard of Richard Trevithick, in contrast to the various historical Jeb Stuarts who are quite well known and easy to confuse.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 06:02, October 9, 2016 (UTC) :If (and I say if) we're going to reclassify him as fictional, then dwelling on the inconsistency makes no sense, since we are now saying HT did this deliberately. (The Stuart conversation is irrelevant.). TR (talk) 07:06, October 9, 2016 (UTC) Fictional This character has been discussed elsewhere, and it's generally agreed that he was never meant to be the real Trevithick, so should be regarded as fictional. This much-earlier analog business seems to be an HT trope, with the wiretapping soldiers in The Grapple, the pirates of Avalon, Sigismondo Gioioso, Wilberforce (A Different Flesh), and some guy in The House of Daniel whom HT acknowledges in the afterword has been placed 40 years ahead of schedule.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 08:58, December 16, 2016 (UTC) :Yes, it has been discussed elsewhere. Why are you bringing this up yet again? TR (talk) 16:57, December 16, 2016 (UTC) ::The current trend suggests that it's time to fictionalize this one.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 07:11, December 17, 2016 (UTC) Dates The 1750 thing is purely speculative, there isn't any clue to his precise age. And he's not a Died Under Unknown Circumstances, since he is alive at the end of the story and not mentioned in the later stories.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 07:24, January 24, 2017 (UTC) :He didn't live to 1988. TR (talk) 15:36, January 24, 2017 (UTC) ::We discussed multi-generational stories before. Characters are only regarded as dead if they are referenced posthumously. None of the characters in "Though the Heavens Fall" are referenced in later stories or by the Very Famous Historian, thus Jeremiah Gillen, Alfred Douglas, etc., do not have the DUUC (FW) in their categories. Samuel Pepys, on the other hand, is referenced by Gillen and Douglas a century after his death, so he has the designation. Henry Quick is referenced by the Historian and by characters in "Freedom," so he has it too. But none of the other "Trapping Run" characters have it even though they didn't live to 1988 either. More to the point, none of the characters from "The Iron Elephant" who survived the sim attack have DUUC (FW) because they are never mentioned in later stories. ::Also, Trevithick should be changed from 1750s Births to 18th-century Births, since there's not enough info about his age. The 1750 bit is from the days when it was assumed he was the historical figure, and a Procrustean effort was being made to get his age as close to "our" Trevithick as possible yet still have him be old enough to build a steam engine.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 18:50, January 24, 2017 (UTC) :::The duuc has been eliminated, but 18th-century births is still missing.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 19:00, February 28, 2017 (UTC) Age I've reviewed the story, and it says he is young. A c.-1757 birth is a reasonable estimate.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 09:00, December 23, 2018 (UTC)